


Salvation is Coloured in Blue

by LadyVictoriaBlackfyre



Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Abandonment, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, But we're rolling with it, Death, F/M, Hope, Inspired by a Tumblr Prompt, Near-meets, Not too sure about this tbh, Romance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Soulmates AU, Violence, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26567902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyVictoriaBlackfyre/pseuds/LadyVictoriaBlackfyre
Summary: Based off of the tumblr prompt that the injuries you sustain is echoed upon your soulmate's body in blue.--------Having a soulmate for Nimue is just another reason to be scorned; for the Weeping Monk, it speaks of damnation.Perhaps, however, it can be both of their salvations.
Relationships: Gawain | The Green Knight & The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed), Mentions of Arthur/Nimue, Nimue & Pym (Cursed), Nimue & Squirrel | Percival (Cursed), Nimue/The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed), Squirrel | Percival & The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 113





	Salvation is Coloured in Blue

A scream, a terrible, earth-shattering, wailing scream, sounded out as a man and a woman slowly burnt, their hands desperately outstretched towards each other whilst the flames feasted upon their flesh.

The sound, however, had not been roused from them but from the young boy observing them in their desperate deaths. Crimson arms were wrapped around him like chains as he strained to reach them, howling out his pain. The boy, the animal, bit into one of the arms, loosening their grip to race forwards.

Skin peeling, fingers straining towards her husband’s, the melting woman’s grey-blue eyes flickered from her daughter’s body – fair hair stained a beautiful red – to her son.

Run, her lips seemed to form, though the smoke blowing in front of her made it difficult to read. His father had started screaming now, joining the chorus of pain. Run, more desperate now, more hopeful, I love you.

A different set – a stronger set – of scarlet chains held onto him now, bruising his tender skin; he shouted for help, he tried to wriggle away. He called out for his mother and father and sister.

His mother began to scream.

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

Nimue had just turned four years old. 

She was a big girl now, she had decided, old enough to venture alone into the forest with Pym. The two of them, partners in mischief, had snuck off towards the lake. There had been so many fishes! Red, yellow, blue, purple – all colours, everywhere!

They were just so beautiful, the young girl thought defensively. She just had to take a closer look. Nimue shivered at the memory, despite the cold clothes having been stripped from her and replaced with an old, long cloth of her mother’s.

She had simply wanted to stick her finger in the water and see if one would swim up to her, but instead – a sudden slip in the fresh mud from several nights worth of rain had sent her head first into the water.

Her mouth, open upon submersion into the water, filled up with the salty-tasting liquid; filling her lungs as air did, but she found herself unable to exhale. Instead, she simply swallowed more and struggled. As she looked up, however, to the image of the sun breaking through the water, lighting up all the lovely fishies while her body accepted it’s fate, she felt at peace.

It was Gawain who pulled her from the water, like plucking a soul out of hell. When she broke the surface, she almost felt disappointed. Only for a moment.

After throwing up most of the water, and being rushed back to the tent by her mother, who had been beside herself, she had been stripped of all clothing.

There they had found it.

Upon both of her pale forearms were handprints. Not bruises, of purple or yellow or green. No, of blue. A stunning, cerulean blue.

Barely below them were more marks of blue, wrapped around her body as if someone had tightly gripped their arms around her to hold her still. Her stomach was stained various shades – midnight, royal, cyan, sky, pale. 

Lenore sucked in a tight breath, and turned her daughter’s naked body around. On her back, rather than an expanse of clear skin, was what appeared to be lashes. These did not vary in shade. These were all coloured midnight blue.

Her mother and father exchanged a look that Nimue could not understand, and retreated to the opposite side of the hut, behind a makeshift divider of patches of spare clothing material.

They argued under their breaths, and Nimue curled in on herself. Her parents hardly ever argued. As far as the little girl – big girl, she thought – knew they hardly ever talked, rarely even looked at one another even when they slept side by side.

It was her fault, she decided, learning for the first-time what self-loathing felt like.

She longed for the water’s soothing embrace.

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

Lancelot had just turned nine – he had been with the Red Paladins for fourteen months and twenty-five days, he knew from his secret chalk wall that his Father had yet to discover, a shiver went down his spine at the very idea of him finding it – when an expression unlike any other had flittered upon Father Carden’s face. It had been during Lancelot’s icing, which had required him to be stripped.

Today, Lancelot had been on his first purging of a Fey village. There had been a little boy, maybe seven, or perhaps five, who had been fleeing from the flames. He had fair hair, and peculiar purple eyes.

Target practice, Father Carden had called the child, bidding his charge raise his bow. Lancelot had done as he was asked, and trained it on the boy as he ran. He had prepared the arrow for release. 

A woman ran up to the boy, kneeling down in front of him and checking him for injuries. She held her child close for but a moment, before picking him up and beginning to run.

Lancelot let the arrow fly.

He missed.

Father Carden’s lip had curled, acknowledging the purposefulness of the mistake. He had the woman and the boy rode down and captured, and had attached them both to wooden crosses before putting the flaming torch to light them in Lancelot’s hand.

The light-haired boy’s eyes had widened in horror.

“Not my son!” The woman had screeched, as Father Carden had held tight to Lancelot’s wrist, forcing his hand down and lighting the pyre, “he hasn’t done anything! He’s an innocent! He’s a child!”

The boy said nothing as Lancelot was forced to set him aflame; no begging or pleading or bargaining. Only cried.

Somehow, that was worse.

Upon arrival back at the camp, he had – when commanded – wriggled first out of his undershirt before moving to remove the rest. Only, he never managed to.

Father Carden’s breath caught, and he traced what felt to be claw marks (by the way the Father clenched his fingers and painfully dug his sharp nails in anyway) before he moved around his back to stand in front of Lancelot.

He drew his hand back and slapped him harshly. The boy tasted blood.

“You are more twisted in nature than I had imagined, demon,” the man hissed out. Lancelot felt like crying. Why did he feel like crying? He hated the man, didn’t he? But to a child, alone in the world, the rejection hurt all the same. Father Carden’s tone then grew softer, “no matter. Our efforts will simply have to be… intensified.”

The grey-haired man saw the child’s trembling lip and watery eyes, and smiled kindly, “so long as you do everything we say, you will be forgiven by the Lord himself. You will be loved. Choose to resist and you will continue an existence of loneliness. Only fools love demons. Fools and liars.”

He waited for Lancelot’s reaction, so he nodded in understanding. Had his mother been a fool, he wondered, had his father and sister been fools too? She was certainly a liar, he decided, remembering her final, mouthed words: I love you. If she had loved him, he decided with a burning pain, she would not have left him in a world where the mercy of Father Carden was all that lay between him and Brother Salt’s Kitchens! She would not have left him alone with a man who made him… Who made him…

Lancelot wanted so desperately to be sick.

He was sick once, when he had been given the tour of Brother Salt’s Kitchens, and he had been lashed most brutally for it.

He swallowed hard.

Suddenly, without warning, the bucket of ice was tipped upon him; encasing him in a fountain of sharp, hard, cold blocks. 

It burned.

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

Over the years, Nimue had grown used to the paintings of blue that so often adorned her skin. Grown used to it, but loathed what it represented.

Somewhere her soulmate – even after knowing that she (the witch, the demon, the underserving) had one for years, the idea had become no more conceivable – was out there, in what seemed to be an endless torrent of physical pain, made her want to curl in on herself as she did as a child and sob.

Instead, she resolved herself to be strong. To be determined. To not give into the urge to simply fill her pockets with rocks and let herself sink into an everlasting peacefulness.

One day she would meet them, and she would save them. 

Or at least, Nimue hoped she would. Right now, however, she needed to save herself. Flames had devoured her village, people whom she had known since birth – people who had been around since before her mother was born – were tied to crosses and wailing as the flesh on their faces bubbled.

The stench was repulsive. It made her knees weak. A burn-y, flesh-y, sickly sweet-y smell invading her nostrils as the Feys had invaded the land of Britannia – taking it from the giants who had taken it from the dwarves and were now having it taken by the humans.

Someone grabbed Pym. 

Nimue screamed as she ran towards her, desperate to reclaim her friend, only to have a Paladin take her too. She struggled against him fiercely, knowing she was bruising herself in the process.

Would they see her bruises, painted in blue, as she had seen their’s?

The man in red, devoid of his darkly cloaked henchman (a man of the flames, she thought), stood before her when she was forced to kneel.

“See this brothers?” the man before her proclaimed, observing her, “this is why we must be strong.”

One of the Paladins cruelly kicked at her stomach as she tried to call upon her powers, she crumpled, hating herself. 

Pathetic, she admonished herself, why can’t you just get up? Why do you have to be so weak?

A man held her throat as what appeared to be the leader continued on with his cold statement, before ordering her to be put to the flame.

The arrows came and Nimue ran.

She found her mother. She found the sword.

Upon that rock, gripping onto the Sword of Power, she promised herself that she would never have to feel weak again.

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

“Wolf’s blood,” he identified to his companions, trying to lose himself in tracking rather than recalling what he found last night. The blue on his neck, on his stomach, on his forearms.

The Weeping Monk did not have a soulmate. He did not need one. His service and loyalty and devotion was promised to God and God alone, not the monster that corrupted his skin.

He refused to listen to the insecurities at the back of his head, the one that wondered if there truly was someone out there that could love an abomination like him. The Weeping Monk viciously fought the optimistic ideal.

Only fools love demons, he reminded himself, just as he did every night he saw the blue bruises – ignoring the rage-provoking knowledge that somewhere out there, his soulmate was being harmed – fools and liars. 

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

Over the weeks, Nimue’s back had been painted blue, midnight blue, all over her back. It happened often, and she was filled with sorrow each time it did. Was someone hurting them? She had regularly found herself wondering, her hand itching towards her sword as if she could slay them currently (except, she noted when her hand met nothing now, she couldn’t for that bastard had stolen her sword) or – a possibility that filled her with a cold, drowning dread – were they doing it to themselves?

She wondered if her wounds from the Red Lake had appeared upon them. Most likely. She felt guilty only to an extent for covering them in blue, the other part of her was twistedly glad – at least they knew she was here.

A part of her longed for them to find her. 

She had lost everything in the past couple of weeks, perhaps she could serve to gain something. Maybe she should carve her location into her arm. No, she decided, believing that she wasn’t quite that desperate yet.

Overhearing the man from her village speaking in a kind of meeting room, she swiftly found a serving girl to intercede.

“I’ll bring it to them,” Nimue told her, and when she was questioned she soon harshly threatened, “give me the jug or I’ll bite your fingers off.”

Without complaint, the jug was handed over. 

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

The Weeping Monk strided down the halls of the Abbey towards where Father Carden was holding a meeting with controlled haste. He was running late. It had taken more trouble than had been anticipated to gain the map; trouble having a face as three old but determined Fey elders, all of whom had passed into the twilight.

Luckily for him, Father Carden greeted him warmly, but the man’s attention was soon caught by something else. Whispering. 

The Hidden.

They hadn’t tried to communicate with him since he was a seven or eight year old boy, before the purge of Redden Bay. Why now?

He wouldn’t allow it to distract him, however, as any sign of hesitation would surely be perceived as a weakness, so he continued on walking towards the Father, dropping the hard-claimed maps before him upon the large, wooden table.

Father Carden joyfully proclaimed what they were to the group surrounding the table, while he stood stationary behind the man. 

Now he had a moment, his face obscured by his dark hood, he tried to listen into what the Hidden were saying, to little avail. Their voices were still there, faded but consistent, just beyond his reach.

For a moment, as his Father told them of his plans for Merlin, the voices reached a climax. From what they were saying, he only caught three words ‘save’, ‘fool’ and ‘blue’.

His focus on the Hidden had almost prevented him from sensing the feeling of eyes staring into the back of his head. After he had recollected himself from the confusion of their words, he turned slightly to his left.

There was nobody there, but a scent lingered.

The scent of wolf’s blood. 

Storming silently through the Abbey, like a muted hurricane, he followed his nose to the bedchambers of some Nuns. He ignored the sense of embarrassment at entering a woman’s bedroom, and continued on.

In one of the chests before the beds, he would find a blue dress that, too, smelt of wolf’s blood. Of her. The sounds of the Hidden rose up once more.

“The one,” they said, their words obscured by the amount of them talking and by his futile efforts to block them out, “the one with the blue… only fools… Save her.”

He staunchly ignored the voices, refusing to ponder on them for a simple moment. Each time his mind wondered, he counted, resolving to punish himself later. For now, he needed to alert Father Carden.

“The enemy is here,” he would tell him, despite the sense of wrongness that filled his gut. 

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

“It was lovely,” she reassured him, offering the man a small smile.

It wasn’t a lie. It was lovely. Different to what she imagined, sure, but when did fantasy ever truly live up to reality? Nothing in life was perfect, so it would be wrong of her to assume that sex should be.

Arthur gave her a boyish smile in return for her words, before his eyes fixated on her upper shoulder and reaching out a hand towards her.

She moved away swiftly, believing he was striving to touch her scars, and ignored the guilt she felt at his hurt expression. It was not something Nimue could help. Her scar wasn’t like his, a source of regret and remembrance, her’s was one of humiliation and abandonment. 

Nimue needed time to come to terms with the fact that her life wasn’t like that anymore. After all, it had only been a mere month – if that – since her own people were hollering witch at her. Some were the same people that now called her Queen, she thought with a degree of bitterness and triumph. She needed time to fully trust Arthur.

Instead of reaching for her again, he inquired, “what are they? The lines of blue on your shoulder? Is it a Fey mark?”

The Fey Queen was silent for a moment before she answered, vaguely, “A Fey mark of kinds, I suppose.”

“What does it mean?” the Manblood further questioned, perhaps too curious to recognise Nimue’s lack of will to talk about it.

“Some say it’s the pain of your soulmate echoed on your skin,” Nimue replied stiffly, acknowledging that her friend’s – lover’s, she supposed – wonder would not be sated until he knew, “they are very rare.”

Arthur went silent, recoiling away from her and regarding her with unconcealed hurt, before speaking, “you promise yourself to me and yet you have a soulmate?”

Nimue grew angry quickly, shoving the covers off of her naked frame and stalking unashamedly towards where her pile of clothes lay, “I did nothing of the sort!”

“So, what am I to you then? Just some bed warmer? Nimue, you mean more to me than that!” He expressed loudly, getting to his feed as well, “how could you not tell me this?”

“I am the Queen! I am not obliged to tell you anything!”

“You may be the Queen, but I thought you were my friend,” the handsome human told her, his voice now soft and subdued, “and I thought you could be more than that.”

He walked towards the doors, and Nimue thought about going after him. Apologising. Being more informative. Explaining herself by telling him how she was hardly promised to someone that she didn’t even know; how she cared for him too.

Instead, she let him walk out the door. Leave her, just like so many others. Like her fa- Jonah and her mother. 

When the door shut behind him, she was slashing at the curtains of her bed with the Devil’s Tooth.

She hadn’t even realised that she had picked the sword up.

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

The Queen had given herself up, the Weeping Monk had been informed. The woman who had been a thorn in his ass for the past several weeks was going to meet the flames. Merlin was here too, apparently. 

The Red Paladins, it appeared, was winning. 

However, Lancelot was not destined to choose the winning side. Nay, that option had passed him by the moment he had chosen to slash open Brother Salt’s neck for the boy, or perhaps it had been before that, due to his interaction with Gawain.

When he had met the Green Knight on the battlefield, more than one secret had been unveiled. Before the long-haired man had seen his hands, tinted green in his connection to nature, he had gazed upon the pale blue gash on his cheek.

“You’re her’s,” the man had stated, mouth open in surprise, before he had been side tracked with the Weeping Monk’s Fey reveal.

Who’s? the darkly clothed man had wanted to scream at the Green Knight, but had managed to control himself.

It was better he did not know.

He was neither a fool nor a liar, so he could not love the demon whose soul was woven to his. And nobody could ever love him.

As Lancelot resided upon his knees, being beaten brutally by the weapons of the Trinity Guard, he wished that he had asked Gawain. Surely the man was dead now, and dead men have nothing to tell.

The boy caused a distraction, before grasping the older man and helping him towards his horse.

“Come on, come on,” the child groaned under Lancelot’s heavy weight, ignoring the trickle of crimson that splattered into his hair from the man’s face, “we have to go.”

The man who was the Weeping Monk tried to hold his weight as much as he could, ignoring the inferno of pain that threatened to devour him.

He would live, he told himself, if only to give the boy peace of mind. With those thoughts, he used all the strength he could muster to pull himself and the boy atop Goliath before they set forth upon the road out of camp.

The man of Rome who had set the Trinity Guard upon him darent come after him. Even injured, Lancelot was a formidable opponent, and the man looked like he would shit his pants before he participated in a sword fight.

He snorted at his own thoughts, earning himself a judgemental look from both the boy and the horse as they joined a dirt road.

They exchanged names.

Lancelot and Percival.

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

She fell. 

Arrows lodged into her chest, a father’s hand too slippery to hold onto, a screaming friend. 

The water embraced her.

\--------------NL----------------NL----------------NL---------------

Percival did what he could to help Lancelot down from his horse, holding tightly onto the man’s torso as he swung down. His strength, however, did little to help and the black cloaked man found himself sprawled upon the floor regardless. 

With a groan, he wrenched himself up from the ground, onto all fours, and crawled until he felt he could stand. It would have been humiliating to crawl in front of his Brothers, but he felt far more comfortable in front of the boy. Also, he was in too much pain to care too much for dignity.

As soon as he reclaimed his footing, he stood. As soon as he stood, he almost fell straight back over. 

The Hidden all but assaulted him.

She’s in the lake! They screeched, and he put a hand to each ear in a desperate attempt to block out the noise. She’s in the lake!

“Your face is uglier than usual,” he heard over the demands of the Hidden, he turned towards the boy and tried to focus in on his voice instead, “you’ve got like a half moon across one side of your cheek! Like-like a banana!”

Lancelot smiled at the boy. It was obvious that he was insulting him to try to distract him from his pain. A valiant effort, Lancelot decided, but not enough to make the significant pain detract. 

The voice would not be quietened.

The lake! She’s in the lake!

Finally, Lancelot looked to the lake. When he couldn’t see anything within it, he moved towards it slowly yet steadily, wincing with ever movement.

The boy called after him, questioning his movements, yet Lancelot continued on.

When he got a full view of the lake, he could see a girl floating on the surface, eyes shut and skin tinted blue. Lotuses and water lilies surrounded her, and a swarm of fish surrounded her of all colours – red, yellow, blue, purple.

Surely, she was dead, he decided to himself, fascinated at the sight of her. He didn’t notice Squirrel gasping in recognition and calling out her name.

What he did notice was the way she was moved towards them slowly, likely by the Hidden. By the time her face came into view, his breath caught in his throat.

Not at her looks, though they were exquisite, but at the blue that covered her face. A half-moon. A banana, as Percival had noted.

He hadn’t even seen his own face, so he decided that the boy had been mistaken.

Lancelot peered into the water, and his face echoed her blue in red.

His gaze fell upon the arrows imbedded in her shoulder and torso. Shakily, whilst Percival clamoured into the water to start pulling her out, he shifted his shirt so he could see.

Two royal blue wounds, where perhaps arrow heads may have lodged themselves.

When the boy managed to get her body onto the bank, glowering at Lancelot for his lack of help, her eyes shot open and she moved to the side to cough up water from her lungs. 

She opened her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Will be a two-shot! Not quite the ending ;)
> 
> No beta and I'm tired af so I hope this reads alright!
> 
> I'm not too sure about this - I haven't written on any site for nearly six months - but I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Please comment and leave kudos if you did like it!


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